There is a forum dedicated to this type of thing, you might try asking your question there too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Harvest Forum

Check the link below for more information.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: National Center for Home Food Preservation / Drying

october17, I dehydrate apples for snacks in an old Harvest Maid dehydrator.

I slice the apples into a bowl of water that I've broken a couple of vitamin C capsules into, then spread them onto the trays and dry them. I dry them longer than the NCHFP suggests because my kids like them crunchier instead of chewier. Elery also uses them for his Mom's apple stack cake.

Annie

Yep, me too. Same as Annie, except sometimes I just splash some lemon juice in the bowl of water. I have a peeler/corer so it makes fast work of it. They do turn brown fast so have your bowl of water ready. If ya really want to get fancy, sprinkle a little cinnamon on them after you place them on the trays. Make clean up a little more difficult, but they're sure good snacks!

Have fun!
Deanna

When freezing apple slices, I dip them in salt water to keep them from turning brown.

Thank you everyone for your help! I have a bag of apples and some lemons. I guess I'll just have to try out the new thing, what have I got to lose (except the bag of apples)? Why does the brand K-Tel sound so familiar? Am I confusing it with Ronco or something?

I'll have to go get a good slicer too. I have a food processor with slicing blade, but the slices don't come out uniform so based on everyone's advice, I won't even try to use it.

I was planning to leave the peel on, that'll be OK right?

Thanks for the link to the Harvest forum - I can't seem to find that one when I'm looking for it??????? Is it just me then?? LOL

i use a peeler slicer corer then toss the apple slices in lemon juice and dehydrate i was given a harvest maid. a peeler slicer and corer makes beautiful even slices, so easy

We sometimes sprinkle them with a little cinnamon. Yummy.

I make apples almost non-stop in the late summer/early fall when Jonathan apples are available (they are our favorite apples for dehydrating). Some varieties of apples are bland/tasteless when dehydrated, so work best for cooking or making into applesauce, rather than snacking.

When I make deyhdrated apple rings I use my cutting mandoline for slicing. Wash the apples, remove any stem and cut out any bad spots, then I cut them from the bottom of the apple up to the top. You'll end up with a "star" in the middle of the slice where the seeds are in the core. If you like, you can remove the core before slicing. Don't bother removing the seeds if you leave the core in, they generally fall out during handling, in the water bath, or during drying. You can poke any remaining seed portions out with a toothpick.

For slices I use my apple slicer & corer (I leave the peel on). Once I have the apple in wedges I use a paring knife to cut each wedge into 3-4 slices (1/8-1/4-inch thick).

Toss the slices into an acidic bath (1/2 t. of citric acid per quart of water) or lemon juice/water, before placing on a drying tray. I dry apples at 115F. 6-8 hours. Make sure it shows no moisture when you pull a slice apart and squeeze it, to test for doneness. If you leave too much moisture in the apples they will mold in storage. I like rubbery slices for cooking and crispy slices for snacking.

"Making & Using Dried Foods" by Phyllis Hobson is a great book on the subject. The instructions give information about any pre-treatment that might be necessary for foods, as well as the temperature needed for proper drying (not all foods dry properly at the same temperature). Increasing the temperature to hasten drying will result in hard casing - the outside of the food will dry too quickly and there will be a hard "skin" formed. The moisture inside the food will not evaporate through the "skin" and the food will mold from the high amount of moisture inside. Some foods require blanching in a boiling water bath or steaming before drying to halt the enzyme action. Cranberries must be blanched, or cut with a knife, to split the skin or they won't dry properly. This book also gives recipes for using the dried food.

I use the new recommendations for an acid bath with most foods I dehydrate. Not only does it help keep apples from turning brown from oxidizing, but it also helps prevent microbial growth (such as Salmonella and E. Coli 0157:H7). There is still a certain percentage of moisture remaining in dehydrated foods (fruit dried at home normally has 20% moisture remaining and vegetables about 10%), which can be host for microbial growth.

We use dehydrated zucchini instead of potato chips at our house and a mandoline is the best tool to use to get really thin slices.

I also use a method of dehydration called DEHYDROFREEZING. It's a combination of dehydrating and freezing. You remove less moisture (about 70%) during dehydrating, but because of the high moisture content left in the food, you MUST freeze it to prevent microbial growth. The pluses from using this method is that the food takes up less freezer space, have better flavor and color and reconstitute in about half the time it takes to rehydrate than traditionally dried foods.

-Grainlady

Oh, man! Those apple slices came out good! They were gala apples. The mandolin slicer I used (Martha Stewart) only makes really thin slices. The outside of the box says it makes three different thicknesses, but I could not figure out how to change that. BF is going to check it out because he wants to make potato chips. Maybe he'll figure it out.

I dropped them right into filtered water with fresh lemon juice then patted them dry with a towel. I only made three trays since they were gala and they were so thin and it was MY FIRST TIME. I wish I had done them all!!! Especially after I made a cobbler with the remaining galas and it was not very good at all.

Thank you everyone for sharing your knowledge!!! I'll be doing this again soon!